How Not to Stress

Darshan's sage wisdom on how not to stress:

1. Stop thinking things should be different than how they are.

We spend an awful lot of time pushing resistance by thinking things should be different. The traffic should be faster, the co-worker should be on time, the dinner should be made already, the chores should be done. Things are what they are. The moment we stop thinking otherwise is the moment we release the resistance that holds us back from appreciating it.

2. Stop wanting and wishing that things would be different.

We lose ourselves in la-la land of wishful thinking. The illusion is a nice getaway - maybe - but mostly it is just a trick we use to diffuse how we see the current situation. At some point, we actually can start to believe that what we want is what is real, and what is isn't. It's pretty interesting how that happens. But again, it creates an internal resistance against what is and holds us back from really appreciating where we are right now and what's happening.

3. Release the emotion around the moment.

Things are what they are. that's really the end of the sentence. No matter how you feel about any particular moment does not change the moment one iota. You can cry, laugh, rant and rave, get hysterical, or sleep it off and nothing you feel about the moment will make any imprint or impact on it whatsoever. So why do we get so emotional about it? Refer back to #1 and #2. We think it should be different, we want it to be different and it isn't, it is what it is. So take three super long, deep, slow breaths and see if you can release some of the emotion about it.

4. Final trick: Gratitude

And here is a final little trick that is guaranteed to work: practice gratitude. Whatever is going on in your world in this moment when you think things should be different or want things to be different, you aren't really experiencing the moment. The practice of gratitude kind of forces you to really sink yourself into the moment to find what is beautiful, worthy, cool about it. So you're sitting in traffic. It gave you time to do some breathing exercises, you got to listen to your favorite song 4 times and sing really loud, you called a friend you haven't spoken to in a long time (using a headset of course), you sat in peace for 5 minutes. Getting pissed at the traffic didn't work, but gratitude will always work. And it works in any situation. Just start counting your blessings and don't stop.

Don't stress. Life's not worth stressing over. Missing life is what you should be stressing over, but once you're present, there's no stress.

Blessings.
- Darshan

© 2009 Darshan F Jessop